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Intelligence Chairman Accuses Obama Aids of Hundreds of Unmasking Requests (thehill.com)
mi writes: When American spies capture our communications with foreigners, the identities of Americans on the other side of the conversation are generally protected -- if not by bona-fide laws, then certainly by rules and regulations. A transcript of the conversation should have their name replaced with labels like "U.S. person 1". The citizen involved can only be "unmasked" with a good reason. In 2011, Obama relaxed these rules, making it much simpler even for officials without any intelligence role to obtain the identities. Predictably, certain top officials of the Obama Administration abused their access to get this information: "The [House Intelligence] committee has learned that one official, whose position had no apparent intelligence related function, made hundreds of unmasking requests during the final year of the Obama administration," [Intelligence Chairman Devin] Nunes wrote. "Of those requests, only one offered a justification that was not boilerplate."
The O administrative was probably the most manipulative administration ever.
See subject
Well, Obama did promise more transparency in government. He never specified what kind of transparency.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
This is the story you should follow, Americans. Not any of that other fake news.
Read the article. Who gives a shit about the messenger, if the message is true?
This is potentially massive corruption and a gross violation of the Constitution. It doesn't matter what administration did it or who is bringing it to light... It's fucking criminal.
Unmasking private citizens who have not been accused of a crime should be a crime.
Unmasking a public or political official who is trying to sell out the country should earn you a $3 fine and a gift certificate to Chili's.
By the way, did the members of the Trump administration and his campaign team speak to anyone who wasn't Russian? And why do they seem to have such awful memories when it comes to these meetings when they're filling out (or amending) their security clearance forms? I mean, the Russians I know tend to be pretty memorable people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This unmasking was for political purposes which makes it far worse. The sitting administration was running an intelligence op against the candidate of the opposition party. All the The Russians! bullshit is just a continuation of that op against the electorate.
Who gives a shit about the messenger, if the message is true?
Looking at some recent tweet storms regarding leaks, it seems Trump does.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's also worth noting that the "Intelligence Chairman" in question is Devin Nunes. He was part of the Trump campaign, and had to recuse himself from the Russia probe because he was providing more information to the White House about the investigation than he was providing to the investigation.
I'm not saying that these accusations couldn't possibly be true. I'm saying the accuser isn't remotely credible. This is clearly yet another attempted smoke screen to help Trump cover his crimes.
I think it's fair to disregard the accusation until someone credible steps forward with real information.
This is the same Devin Nunes that was accused of bias in the Congressional investigation into the Russian hacking around the Presidential election. As a matter of fact, he is not acting as chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence at the moment (although he is still the named chairman) as he is currently under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for disclosing classified information to the public.
Also, lets look at what happened with unmasking towards the end of the Obama administration: Certain individuals around Donald Trump, especially Michael Flynn and a few others with exceptionally close connections to him, were unmasked after the routine capture of communications between Russian officials and US citizens was discovered, communications which helped oust Flynn as National Security Advisor, as well as being central to the current expansion of official investigations into possible illegal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 Presidential election.
Putting the above two facts together... until I have some outside, non-partisan source that is backing Nunes, then this looks like a blatantly transparent effort to probably paint the unmasking likely discredit whoever found and revealed the above mentioned conversations, in an effort to paint the entire Russia investigation as illegitimate. And, as a matter of fact, reading a number of sources, it becomes clear that is the EXACT intent of this move. They cover it up by claiming there was 'no justification' because the forms were mostly 'boilerplate'... Yeah, well, at LOT of forms are boilerplate, that's why boilerplate exists in the first place. Just because something is boilerplate doesn't mean that there was no justification. It just means that the justification is used enough that drawing up a standard filler for it is worthwhile. So until there's actual evidence of wrongdoing, Nunes is not exactly an unbiased person in this case, and he has proven before that he is willing to use his biases and act unethically against his political opponents in an effort to retain as much power as possible. If some non-partisan source can confirm what he claims, that's when I'll give these allegations any chance of actually being true, and the actions discussed as being illicit.
This unmasking was for political purposes which makes it far worse.
That's not clear. Was it for political purposes? I don't know. Not enough information.
The headline says the unmasking was by "aids" (meaning aides) to Obama, but the text actually says that most of the unmasking requests were from the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. I could see that the U.N. ambassador might want to know who it was that was on the American end of negotiations with agents of foreign powers. I'd like to know what the conversations that she wanted unmasked were about.
Because who the messenger is is usually a critical piece of information in determining if the message is true.
Looking at some recent tweet storms regarding leaks, it seems Trump does.
So what does that prove -- that idiots do?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I have mod points, but your are already at 5. This state of affairs can't go on much longer. I'm an independent who has voted for Republicans in the past, I even gave a campaign contribution to McCain once. But the Republicans have almost become the enemy of the people by their actions over the last 20 years. I suspect this is because the balance between conservative and liberal has been broken by demographic shifts within our population. The Republicans are on the wrong side of that shift. So they have settled on a course of using the money from moneyed elites to dupe the less educated by appealing to their desire to return to some imagined better days when Christians and Whites ruled the roost. If you are educated and support Republicans because of a fiscal conservative reason --.STOP. The economy is not a zero-sum game. Taking away healthcare or job training or other forms of financial assistance will not make our economy stronger in the long run. Trickle-Down doesn't work. Get over the "I-worked-hard-to-get-where-I-go-so-everyone-else-can-too" attitude. One, I suspect you had more luck and advantages than you realized and Two, if someone is truly unable to climb the ladder because they are weak or not smart enough, then it follows they should suffer or even die? And yes it was Republicans chanting "let them die" at various rallies before the last election.
Letter To Iran
President Obama allowed (and in this case encouraged) a lot of programs and policies that basically violated privacy of it's citizens, violated the constitution (see the data dragnet and court ruling on the programs revealed by Snowden), violated due process (see rendition of Americans) and even violated foreign sovereignty (see Drone programs). Every president has worked to increase the powers of it's position since George Bush Senior. We are losing credibility that we govern under a rule of law as we continue to erode due process, and find new ways muzzle and control U.S. citizens. Now any media critical of the current president is labelled "fake news" and given hostile treatment by the White House. Not exactly the free press were supposed to have. Question is, what the next attack on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and due process is to come this term.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Side stepping that "Obama aids" misspelling is beneath any post...
Isnt this sort of criticism from the same people that suggest that NSA and the like have access to every American's emails, bank accounts, computers, GPS data and so on? -you know because the terrorists win if not and what do they have to hide?
Of course it is not a great idea for non-security related officials to be able to make hundreds of baseless requests but at the same time some of the involved agencies needs to be more transparent with the people they are protecting. ergo, the people. -the logic being the elected officials represent (some of) the people.
So is it Obama's fault that someone this one individual made so many requests without justification? Or MAYBE it's the person handing it over not requesting/confirming/checking and or validating there is justification. After all you could be well within your rights to request something but that still needs to be authorised to avoid these situations.
It's not like this is a blatantly biased article or cheap political click bait on a tech site.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
It's telling that the issue is trying to be framed as one about the intelligence agencies revealing U.S. citizens whose conversations were intercepted as part of legitimate intelligence gathering rather than the fact of collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign government.
We know for an absolute fact Russia was trying to, and successfully did, influence our election. The Senate committee, the House committee and the intelligence services all agree on that unassailable fact.
Yet instead of being concerned or even upset at this interference, Nunes is trying to deflect from this fact to one of, "But people's names were revealed!", as if trying to figure out who was colluding with Russia is a bad thing.
Another thing which is even more disturbing is the continued insistence, and outright denial, by the con artist that Russia either did anything during the campaign, or if they did, that they did anything wrong. This raises the very real question of why the con artist is trying to protect Russia? Why has he abjectly refused to say a single bad word about that country despite it deliberately bombing hospitals in Syria and coordinating the chemical weapon attack in Syria, not to mention its seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine, its invasion of Ukraine and its support for terrorist groups inside Ukraine? If this were Iran doing this the con artist would be bombing away, but because it's Russia, he lets them literally get away with murder.
Further, had Hillary Clinton won and these exact same facts come out, you can be absolutely sure Republicans would be laser focused on who did what and trying to pin the collusion on her. But when it comes to the con artist, they are doing what they can to deflect from the crimes and protect him. Hypocrisy at its best.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
More a statement that, especially when the information is true and goes against his own narrative, Trump is very interested in finding out the identity or attacking the source of that information.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
"Every major news org" is owned by a handful of people. And every US intelligence org didn't conclude squat. The ODNI report claimed "17 agencies" but in reality it said that maybe hacking was something Russia would like to do, it certainly didn't tell us that anyone actually did anything. And it was signed off on by a couple of political appointees. Oh, you also have that opposition report in which nothing of substance could be verified, which contained a /pol piss fanfic, and which allegedly came from MI5... (collusion with foreign spies!). Oh, it also put people in the wrong country because it confused them with people of the same name, displaying exactly the level of "raw intelligence" gathered (i.e. every random rumor from the internet). Even /r/conspiracy can do better than that.
Half of the articles come from the WaPo, owned by Bezos, who can be found in Wikileaks running a clandestine fund-raiser with the DNC that the DNC's own lawyers had forbidden. Then there's the Daily Beast, so you're effectively listening to Chelsea Clinton there. Or CNN? Yeah, the ones who leaked the debate questions and lied to us about it being illegal to read Wikileaks? Oh, and then people told us the emails were "altered" never mind that we have DKIM validation via a key on Hillary Clinton's own DNS server.
You can try to sweep all that under the "conspiracy" rug, but you realize that we have hard proof here, right? If you want to talk conspiracy, why not go after the hundreds of stories that cite each other and anonymous sources? Top officials have confirmed to me that most of these stories are completely fabricated. And who are you to doubt them?
Not just the credentials, but the character. You need to ask yourself, "Can I trust that this guy isn't lying to me?"
> Trumpy moron has no idea what leftism is.
You are why people defect from the party.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
First, let's not go all "Fox-'News"' on your statement. Let's fix it up, so it tells the whole truth.
You are saying that an American citizen speaking with a Russian citizen, knowingly attempting to affect the outcome of the vote, is evidence of nefarious collusion.
Yes. That is what we're saying.
Now, what was your point, again?
This is just more GOP propaganda trying to make the previous administration look bad. They're on a personal vendetta to rewrite history to make him out to be the absolute worst thing.
Meanwhile this administration and everyone in it fully supports monitoring all of your communications...probably to an even more sick degree than previous administrations.
This government isn't governing. Plain and simple. They should fucking do something other than release news every other day about something the other administration did.
God damn this country.
I suspect that when this is all said and done, we will find that the GOP are again, lying about all of this, to try and cover for T and the GOP.
There is little doubt that T/GOP were not only working with Russia, but that the intelligence world has it well documented.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If there's this big rejection of "leftist" ideas, why is it exactly that the ACA is still alive this morning?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That means that this is an attempt to generate a fake Benghazi type scandal.
Let us know when a responsible person comes to the same conclusion.
Compromise is hard even with people you tend to agree with. The ACA had similar problems being passed ("you have to pass it to read it" Pelosi).
That's not a feature of one party.
Never the less, the survival of the ACA suggests, as some Conservative commentators have put it, the "Europeanization" of American health care. In other words, everyone seems to know that one way or the other a single payer health care system is likely the ultimate "fix" of Obamacare.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I hate to break this to you, but Russia and China are not "left." They are capitalists working on building empires, run by dictators.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
w any media critical of the current president is labelled "fake news" and given hostile treatment by the White House. Not exactly the free press were supposed to have
Compared to a press that doesn't investigate the White House and never questions the presidents narrative or position? Either the press is doing the job and the White House don't like it (which is good) or the press weren't doing their job and the White House liked it (which is bad).
We'll see. I have still yet to hear why the individual States can't do it on their own and why it must be the federal government.
Bullshit. The reason they didn't want to actually repeal it is because the second older Americans' insurance rates spiked because all the younger people pulled out or picked discount plans, there are lot of Republicans suddenly looking at serious problems when they have to seek re-election. Americans have made it pretty clear; they hate Obamacare, but they like the ACA, which shows you that branding is pretty important.
And no, they're not going to let Obamacare die either, because the end result would be the same, spiking premiums that would screw over their own voters.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Largely because, historically, or at least since Medicaid was formed, there has been a notion of joint funding of health care, seeing as the Federal Government has far greater resources than the individual states.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
https://www.rawstory.com/2017/...
Nunes is a bigger lying piece of shit than even "mi" is, and that's saying an lot.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Which kind of eludes the idea that the costs are too great and will eventually lead to insolvency because there isn't a higher government above the feds to do any join funding. If it can't work on the state level I am highly skeptical it will work at the national level.
ACA is remaining because the majority in Washington are left of center, Republican and Democrat.
Only if you consider the Church of Ayn Rand to be the center. In the rest of the (real) world, the Democratic party is to slightly to somewhat right of center, and the Republican party is moderately to far right.
If there's this big rejection of "leftist" ideas, why is it exactly that the ACA is still alive this morning?
Because the ACA isn't really "leftist". If it were, the premium payments for all of the additional insured people wouldn't be going to huge for-profit insurance companies.
Given his track record shilling and deceiving for the Trump administration, I don't give anything that Nunes says much shrift. Why is the GOP SO obsessed with Clinton and Obama? I mean they 'won' the election, right? They are in office, right? The committee doesn't have enough current issues to investigate?
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of leftist ideology in progress.
What we're seeing is a slow, world-wide collapse of democratic ideology.. regardless of what side of the isle you happen to like. Even in "democratic" states like the US, we're seeing all sorts of legislation being proposed to knock of voter "fraud" which, completely coincidentally of course, also happens to disproportionately affect democratic voters. Its was bad day when your choices for president were Trump lying to your face and Clinton lying behind your back. Its going to be a worse day when your choices are Trump Jr vs Paul Ryan -- that is, no democratic nominee at all. Even if you don't like the left, its pretty hard to argue that having an opposing view around is helpful to temper the worst ideas.
But as an inherently unsustainable ideology
You do realize that pure capitalism is equally unsustainable right? As with pretty much everything in the world, a balance is generally best. Well unless you're one of the guys at the top, then too far either direction is great as both ways give you nearly supreme power. But unless you're in the 1% (or maybe even 0.1%,) you're going to want to be in the middle where you can make your mark if you're lucky (not too far left) but not be entirely screwed when you're not (not too far right.)
The masses have rejected leftism.
No, the elite have rejected leftism, unsurprisingly. The masses have no idea wtf you're talking about and just vote for the guy who hates on Mexicans and Muslims the most (or whatever the baddie of the decade is if we're discussing other elections) when they see him on TV.
Those promoting leftist ideologies know this is happening.
Well this much is true.
The problem isn't that we're moving away from "leftism." The problem is that the right has sunk to slinging mud and the left hasn't got there yet.
Left: "Climate change is happening, here's shitloads of evidence."
Trump: "Nope fake news!"
Left: "Ok so where's you're evidence to the contrary?" Trump: "Fake news! Its all Hillary's fault!"
Left: "That doesn't even make sense."
Trump: "I know all the things. FAKE NEWS!"
Its hard to argue like that when one side just refuses to even generate a point, never mind a conclusion. And unfortunately the proles are dumb enough to like the reality TV stupidity without realizing that they're losing things like their health care (Yay they can now "choose" to have no healthcare, or a plan that costs 4x as much as it does under the ACA. Too bad they can't choose to just not get sick..) Or their right to choose if they have an abortion or not (because the political right is overrun by Christian fundamentalists who throw their will around even though the US is supposed to have separation of church and state,) and many many other rights and freedoms that all get thrown under the bus in the name of making the already-rich a little bit richer.
You are correct in that the world is moving away from socialist policies.. but I don't think your reasoning about the causes is correct, and unless there's some reversal, the long goal of the current political climate is toward oppression of the masses, rather than freedom for them, as more and more of the currently-middle class get pushed closer to the poverty line.
The ACA is an attempt to apply capitalistic principles to universal healthcare. Many conservatives would back it if it wasn't called Obamacare. If it dies get ready for Euro-style single-payer.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Hey, watch the language.
"The killing of the ACA"
What does that mean?
Are all these comments because Trump is having an awful time?
"If it can't work on the state level I am highly skeptical it will work at the national level."
The more drugs you buy the cheaper they are?
"Which kind of eludes the idea that the costs are too great and will eventually lead to insolvency"
But it does work in a lot of places, no?
...and European-style single payer would be a bad thing? I ask this as someone whose disabled spouse (so, pre-existing conditions and little hope of employer-provided healthcare if we were in the US - I work, sure, but your HMOs are nasty fuckers that deserve to die in a fire from what I've read) is alive for their children because of cancer treatment largely paid for by Australia's national public health insurance scheme, Medicare.
The historical parallels are fascinating, to be honest. I'm just waiting for a completely unsuspicious fire at the Reich^H^H^H^H^H Congress.
Funny how I completely missed the collapse of the Scandinavian countries while living there. Not much of a facts person, are you?
sudo ergo sum
"Devin Nunes and Trump are still working together in attempt to manufacture ‘unmasking’ scandal" ref
BS. ACA was discussed for many months with tons of hearings. The final text was known and scored by the CBO. Pelosi's comment was a joke answer to a request to read the bill aloud - a delaying tactic by Reps.
“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention — it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”
Notice, "you can find out what is in it", not "we can find out what is in it".
The "you" means "Citizens of the US." The "fog of the controversy" was the BS and lies invented by Republicans ("Death Panels").
The common description of the ACA - the very epitome of crony capitalism - as "leftist" is evidence that left and right are useless for describing real world politics under the financialist regime.
From the summary: "When American spies capture our communications with foreigners, the identities of Americans on the other side of the conversation are generally protected -- if not by bona-fide laws, then certainly by rules and regulations."
Is any of that true? Or rather should I ask, is anyone naive enough to believe it?
The ACA is an attempt to apply capitalistic principles to universal healthcare. Many conservatives would back it if it wasn't called Obamacare.
This is the funny part, Obamacare really is Romneycare, but Republicans will oppose simply because it was Obama that introduced even though Romney did it first.
So, Obama aides asked for identities of hundreds of US citizens. What about the request of mass information of millions of voters by tRump's cross-check commission, er election commission?
Problem is, Trump would gleefully applaud rescinding Obama's expansion of EO12333 only to replace it with a much more invasive Trump/Pompeo version.
And keep in mind Pompeo founded his own private security firm.
https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
I didn't desert Windows; Windows deserted me: BSOD
My problem is that it is an Executive decision in the first place. Something this important should be controlled by law passed by Congress — not administration's "rules", which is subject to change by the next President.
And worse, when the President is a Democrat, the change is quiet and ignored by the "guardians of truth" and "defenders of liberty".
Oh, and the law should prescribe punishment for the violators.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Waiting now for the typical /. crews of trolls to flame and disrupt this submission, as usually happens with every submission on this forum.
It is typical of a self-serving, knee-jerk reaction showing no capability or interest in distinguishing fact from fiction.
For a community of supposedly tech-savvy and intelligent representatives of the human race, this only highlights that humanity's purported large brains are devolving into the shambles of the undisciplined thought processes of mob reactions and superstitious, unscientific group-speak, devoid of any critical thinking or attention to even the mundane details of ethics or morality.
IMO, Trump's administration has already far surpassed any other administration for its attempts at manipulation and deceptiveness at nearly all, if not at every level of public discourse. Lies, misinformation, and distractions run roughshod over the freedoms and civil rights of the citizens of this country.
The point is not that other administrations have not attempted to spin and manipulate. It's that this administration seems to be in the thrall of a totally self-involved, narcissist who seeks only his own self-aggrandizement, not that different from the depravity shown by the dictatorships of North Korea and Russia.
My only hope is that all our elected representatives will take to heart the sage advice of the lame duck, Senator McCain, who at the end of his political career has realized that it is time to return to the principles of one person, one vote, and to resist the ideological trappings of party in a return to actually representing the needs and desires of real people.
Perhaps the lasting effect of the Trump administration will be to awaken a sleeping public to demand a return to true integrity and support for the democratic principles in our political and social discourse, reversing the trends of the past 40 years that have worked to destroy the fragile gains of human rights and concern for human values above the narrow perversions of greed and brutish reliance on violence that our baser natures find so easily accepted as the first response to every problem.
PlaynBass
...is a fool's bargain, no matter who proposes it.
Whatever happened to all of the opposing viewpoints actually working with each other to arrive at a negotiated approach to solving the actual problem, instead of merely seeing who can spew the most piss to discredit and demonize the opposition.
Really, if this Congress and this Presidential administration and the crippled idiocy of a captured Judiciary is the best our nation can do, our founding father's grand experiment in allowing the people to rule has failed miserably, being wholly replaced by a kleptocracy of the entitled few and their ethically and morally challenged philosophy of greed and corruption.
PlaynBass
The individual states are constrained by their own limited tax bases and can not bring the combined resources of the entire nation to bear on finding a solution to the problem providing true health care instead of this system of enriching the owners and investors of a few insurance companies who can (in the absence of governmental protections) hold every individual hostage to the unavoidable frailties of human life.
The health care problems of the people do not have a marketplace solution because the participants do not exist in a state of equality, which is a precondition for arriving at a perfect marketplace solution. We are seeing the evolution of political and economic thought take place before our very eyes.
The blind adherence to the political and economic theories developed in the past are no longer relevant in this post-technological era. Civilization has finally developed the ability to make a paradise on Earth possible in real time, for every inhabitant of the planet, if only we can find the true grit to move past the superstitions and false traditions of the past.
PlaynBass
-5 mod points to you, AC troll (#54899891)
Do you have these flame bait comments in a script somewhere?
Be gone! Let the adults in the room take it from here, and return to using your stinking mouth hole to its only useful function: sucking on pond scum!
Even scavengers and scum suckers like you have a purpose in the grand scheme of life on earth.
PlaynBass
+5 mod points for this, AC #5490063! Thank you for your cogent remarks.
PlaynBass
The more drugs you buy the cheaper they are?
yes but I would add that in theory it shouldn't change the demand. Single payer vs insurance are different mechanism to pay for the same thing. Point taken though.
But it does work in a lot of places, no?
I would say there is a unique problem in that there is a sizeable voting bloc that do not want it and that makes any implementation hard.
The federal government is constrained as well via a limited tax base. A bigger pot of water will still boil over even if it takes longer.
The blind adherence to the political and economic theories developed in the past are no longer relevant in this post-technological era.
Technology doesn't change corruption. It doesn't change entitlement. It doesn't change any of our faults. Governments are still made of people and still must be constrained in ways to ensure people do not abuse the power of the government. Technology doesn't have an answer for that.
Civilization has finally developed the ability to make a paradise on Earth possible in real time, for every inhabitant of the planet, if only we can find the true grit to move past the superstitions and false traditions of the past.
Yes, if only we had the benevolent dictator to herald the new age of utopia.
Sounds like you're arguing for very strict immigration laws. Also, that is easily addressed by residency. There are rules each state have that you must do to attain residency.